


when I appear it's not so clear if I'm a simple spirit or I'm flesh and blood

by suzukiblu



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Coming of Age, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Imprisonment, M/M, Sexual Themes, Sickness, Violence, unknowing incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15130934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: Chief Hakoda's only child makes a habit of finding mysterious young men. Some of them she likes more than others.-----The first time Katara sees a boy her own age, she thinks he is a spirit.





	when I appear it's not so clear if I'm a simple spirit or I'm flesh and blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beckyh2112](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckyh2112/gifts).



> beckyh2112's winning bid for a charity auction back in our LJ days, but I have _actually forgotten which one_ , which just proves how damn long it has taken me to finish writing this. >__>;; YEARS. LITERAL YEARS. 
> 
> Don’t be like me, kids, finish your obligations asap.
> 
> She wanted "raised by leopard seals" Sokka. Everything else is my fault.

The first time Katara sees a boy her own age, she thinks he is a spirit. He doesn’t move human, and even if he did, what human would step naked into polar water?

It’s the first time she sees a boy naked, too.

“Hello?” she tries, uncertain, and the spirit boy’s head snaps up and their eyes lock, just for a second. Katara is . . . shaken. The spirit boy _grins_ , all wild hair and laughing eyes, and opens his mouth to—

A seal cries, far across the water, and the spirit boy’s head snaps towards it.

“Wait,” Katara says, but he’s already gone, disappearing into the water with barely a ripple. She wants to cry. Instead she remembers her mother’s stories of seals shedding their skins to be human, and for the first time since her death does _not_ cry at the thought of her.

Or at least, only cries a little.

She goes back to trying to teach herself how to move the waves, and doesn’t tell Dad or Gran-Gran when she gets back to the village. She doesn’t want them to know she cried or how lonely she still feels, how bad it still hurts to not have Mom anymore.

Seeing the spirit boy wasn’t lonely at all, though. Seeing the spirit boy was like . . . like Mom is still _real_ , not just a fast-fading memory so hard to hold onto, not just the weight of a necklace or the feel of the waterbending she'd died to protect. Proof she’d existed, that she’d been real, that she wasn’t _all_ gone—

Except she is all gone, and she has been for almost a year. And everyone else is back to normal and life is normal for them but no matter what Katara tries it _isn’t_ normal. Not for her. Not without Mom.

She doesn’t understand how it could be. She doesn’t _want_ it to be—how could what had happened to Mom _ever_ be normal, how could a life _without_ her?

It isn’t normal.

If it's normal, that's like saying it's okay.

.

.

.

Katara sits by the mundane cookfire and stirs a mundane dinner with mundane practice, thinking of water without a ripple and the one and only boy her own age in all the South. Dad isn’t back from the hunt and Gran-Gran is busy sewing her a new parka to replace the one she’s already outgrown. If Mom were alive she would’ve had a new one for spring, but Gran-Gran gets tired easily and doesn’t have much time to sew, so Katara doesn’t complain; she just stirs dinner and thinks of things besides the fact that the parka Gran-Gran is sewing her will be the first one she ever wears that Mom didn’t make.

She thinks of the spirit boy and his wildly unsad grin, and the sight of him vanishing into the water.

Mom used to tell her stories about the seal spirits, except she never mentioned there were _boy_ seal spirits, or really anything about what their seal lives were like. The stories were all about wicked human men stealing seal spirit women's skins and forcing them into marriage so they had to stay with them forever. The seal spirits always seemed to get their skins back in the end and get free, but the stories that Katara had liked the best and told herself over and over were the ones when the seal spirits came out of the water themselves and gave their skins to someone precious and worthy and _did_ stay forever. 

That was before, though, when the world was so small and she believed everything would always be okay.

Now she tells herself the ones about the seal spirits taking revenge on the men who hurt them.

.

.

.

The men come back lucky from the hunt. There are so many bear-caribou and turtle-seals and walrus-elk that when Katara asks no one thinks twice about giving her a fat chunk of meat and letting her run off with it. She's always been solitary anyway, always off alone with her bending for lack of other children her age to play with, and she's been even more that way without her mother. 

She doesn’t want to steal his skin. She would _never_ do that.

She just needs to know more.

Katara does not start a fire—a seal wouldn’t come for _cooked_ meat—and she doesn’t spread the blood around, because who _knows_ what would come for that. She just leaves the meat by the water, right where the spirit boy was, and hopes he’s as curious about humans as she is about spirits. Katara needs to believe in spirits—in seal-skinned boys and the long-lost Avatar and justice and balance and _vengeance_. In not being alone in the world.

She just hopes spirits need to believe in humans too.

The meat sits by the water. Katara sits behind a snow drift, and waits. She tells herself all her mother’s stories and all her mother's mother’s stories and hopes, and hopes, and holds out for anything the world will give her.

The sun sets. The moon rises, and the water thrums louder in her blood.

The spirit boy does not appear.

.

.

.

Late, late into the night Katara finally gives up and drops her face into her hands and cries: cries in big, heaving gasps and sobs, tears and snot that freeze to her face and it’s so cold, and the snow around her goes wet and heavy and sad the way she feels, and all she wants is just some piece of her mother, she can’t have Mom back but she wants _something_. She _needs_ something, she can’t do this without Mom, she’s all alone. All the men and women are too busy for her and all the other kids are too little to help and she’s just—she’s just—she’s so _between_ , she’s all alone, she just wants someone her own _age_ like there was supposed to be, like there has _never_ been—

Something nudges at the back of Katara’s hands, and she stills. It nuzzles the hood of her parka, tugs briefly at the fur lining, and when she forces her hands to fall away, the spirit boy is crouched in front of her, holding the meat clumsily, like he isn’t used to having hands himself. The meat is frozen. Without quite thinking, Katara reaches out and takes the ice out of it, and the spirit boy croons in surprise as it goes soft and lax in his hands, then tears off a bite roughly, thawed blood staining his mouth. Katara almost flinches—she’s never seen a human eat like that—but he’s not really human anyway.

She wants to say something to him but the idea is terrifying. What if she says the _wrong_ thing and he leaves? What if he leaves and never comes back, what if he goes away forever all because she was too stupid to know what to say?

Katara does everything she can to always say the right thing, and in this moment has no idea how to do it.

The spirit boy tears off another bite and purrs around it, then holds the meat out to her. Katara startles, and takes it unthinkingly. The spirit boy makes a noise—encouraging, she thinks, the way a seal would sound encouraging—and nudges meaningfully at the meat. She starts to tell him humans don’t eat raw meat, but then she’s terrified again.

She doesn’t know what she’d do if he left.

She tries to tear off a bite, trying not to gag reflexively, but her teeth won’t do it. Her jaw isn’t strong enough, he’ll _leave_ , she can’t keep even _one thing_ —

Katara bursts into fresh tears, and the spirit boy croons in concern and rubs his face against hers and takes the meat away, and she cries harder, and harder, so much harder she can’t even _see_ him and maybe that means it’ll hurt less when he leaves, she thinks. But it won’t. Nothing could make that hurt less, nothing could even _try_ to, and . . . and . . .

The first time Katara kisses a boy, it’s because he thinks she can’t feed herself. A hot mouth smeared with cold blood collides with hers and she gasps in surprise, and the spirit boy’s tongue pushes chewed-up meat past her teeth. She can barely see him for the tears, but he's as close as she’s ever been to anyone.

She thinks about the stories she used to like, the ones where a seal spirit would give their skin to someone and stay, and she wants . . . she very _badly_ wants. Things she doesn’t know, things she’s never wanted before, things she hadn’t even _thought_ about wanting because there were no boys her own age, no one she could have, because she’s always been the one alone and . . . and . . .

The spirit boy makes encouraging seal-noises and Katara swallows the meat and more tears fall and he licks them all away, licks her face completely clean, and then feeds her another bite with his mouth and licks the blood away too.

She licks the blood off his lips in return, feeling stupid and awkward and not like what any boy would want, spirit or seal or nothing more than just a boy, and he purrs like she’s _exactly_ what he wants and it’s so hard not to cry again.

Then he leaves.

.

.

.

After that, Katara feels different. A spirit touched her, a spirit _kissed_ her _(a boy worried and CARED about her)_ , and she doesn't feel like that girl who cries at night anymore.

_Maybe he will come back,_ she thinks, and she goes down to the water where they met and waits and waits. Any chore she can take down to the water to do she does, any free time she has she spends there, every moment she steals to practice her bending she spends there, and she listens to the rockabye rhythm of the tides and stays and stays until the moon rises and Gran-Gran tells her not to be out so late and Dad tells her it's dangerous down by the water at night, so instead she comes in at sundown and sneaks back out when they're asleep. She can't not.

The tide sings rockabye and Katara feels her blood pulse in time, her heart beat with it, and the spirit boy does not come back but still she waits. She will wait forever, she thinks, and watches the moon and dances under it with the inconstant ice and lapping water, because she can't be still and quiet with moonlight shining so bright on the snow and calling her blood like the tides.

The first waterbenders learned from the moon, Katara knows. Better waterbenders, ones who became real masters, who taught other masters, who weren't alone. Katara has felt alone for so long she doesn't even really remember why, but when a fat full moon hangs overhead for her to bend beneath, she doesn't feel like that at all.

She doesn't know _what_ she feels, but it's not alone.

.

.

.

The spirit boy comes back after a month spent losing herself in dancing with the moon, and Katara blinks, slow and dizzy, and feels . . . different, again. She looks at him, she blinks the moon out of her eyes but not out of her blood or her heart, and he . . . she thinks it's a grin, but maybe he's baring his teeth, and there's a bleeding otter-penguin between them. He brought it for her, she thinks as she watches it bleed, he brought it for her and it is dead, there is no rhythm to that bleed. She knows that without really thinking, but doesn't think to wonder why.

He kisses meat into her mouth and she swallows every bite.

.

.

.

Katara feels different.

.

.

.

Katara _is_ different.

.

.

.

Gran-Gran worries that she's eating so little, but Katara doesn't say a thing. The spirit boy brings meat and fish and her jaw gets stronger, strong enough to tear raw meat on its own, but she never eats until he gives her the first bite. She wonders if he has a name, wonders if he has a . . . family? Pod? Herd? Is he alone too, does he like to feed her, why _does_ he feed her? Why does he do anything he does, show up and not show up, stay with her all night every night or leave her alone and moondrunk for weeks, why is he _here_?

Will he ever come to her as the seal, and not the boy? Will he ever bring her his skin?

_(will he ever STAY?)_

Dad doesn't stay. There's a war, Dad leaves, he leaves and Katara hates him for it and life was hard enough, but with the men all gone suddenly it's so much _harder_. The women hunt now, but there aren't enough of them to hunt and take care of the village and the children and everything else, and they only know what little the men had time to teach before they left—and _all_ the men left, not just most, not even the oldest ones stayed behind.

There were not many old men anyway, Katara admits to herself, curled up small and suffering by the water and staring guiltily at all the fish the spirit boy has brought, more than she could ever eat alone but not enough to help the hungry children and too-thin mothers back home, not enough to make anything better. The spirit boy tries to coax her to eat, tries to kiss meat into her mouth, but she seals her lips and shakes her head and . . . and . . .

“No,” Katara says, wiping away angry tears, hating her helplessness, hating all those years she could've spent learning how to hunt but didn't get to. Hating what she's been denied.

Katara used to have an older brother. She doesn't remember him, the ocean took him years ago, she never even knew him to feel the _loss_ of, not really—but Katara used to have an older brother, one who'd be thirteen or fourteen now, who'd be old enough to hunt but not old enough to fight, not old enough to have gone with Dad, old enough to _help_.

But the ocean took him years ago.

Some days Katara thinks all the world wants to do is take from her.

“The village is starving,” she says. This is the first time she's spoken to the spirit boy _since_ the first time, and now she feels stupid because why should he understand what she says, he is a spirit boy, he is a seal, he is not _human_ —

“Village fish? We fish?” the spirit boy asks, thick and clumsy like a child trying out a new way to communicate, and the water in Katara's blood _roars_.

.

.

.

They fish.

.

.

.

“We fish!” the spirit boy declares, laughing, and Katara closes her eyes and falls forward into the moonlit water and the shock of the cold is _blinding_.

She could drown, she thinks as she sinks, she is a weak and unworthy waterbender and she could drown, but then his arms are around her and the shock and the fear and her doubts are nothing at all, and the waves cradle her like they have waited forever for this.

.

.

.

Gran-Gran tells Katara how proud she is of her fishing, all the women praise the catches she drags back every morning with the new-risen sun, the children cheer her name, and Katara does not say anything about the spirit boy. Saying things about spirits chases them away, that's what all the stories say, and the _last_ thing she wants is for him to be gone. They fish, the water shocks her, he makes it better, she dances with the moon and waves and he catches her when she falls and everything is perfect and everything is _horrible_.

“Do you have a name?” Katara asks, and the spirit boy gives her a funny little grin.

“'Name'?” he parrots back, head tilting the way it does when he doesn't understand.

“I'm Katara,” she says, touching her chest. “That's my name.”

“Ayem Katara!” the spirit boy echoes gleefully, grin so broad and beautiful even though he so obviously doesn't understand what she means, and Katara is thirteen years old and her mother and brother are years-dead and her father may never come home and Gran-Gran is . . . Gran-Gran is _old_ , and old doesn't last long on the ice, and he is all the stories and none of them and the first and only boy.

He makes the moon thrum inside her.

“Never mind,” she says, and then for once dances for him, and not just the moon.

.

.

.

One night there is enough fish and they do not need to catch any for tomorrow or even the day after or the day after that, although they catch some anyway, to preserve and save against future need, days with less lucky fishing. But it doesn't take so long, since they're only catching some, and when they're done the moon is still high and full and the sky is still black. The water glitters with power and Katara feels it in her blood, feels it _everywhere_ , and the spirit boy kisses meat into her mouth and she makes noises she doesn't mean to and puts her hands on his arms to make him stay longer than he needs to. He nuzzles her throat, trying to coax her to swallow, and she does anything but because the moment she does is the moment he will lick the blood off her mouth and pull away. There is a hot and strange thing in her gut that wants him this close, and closer than this close, but she does not know how to feed it and how could she ask? There should be no boys her age, no one to feed it _with_ , and what would the women think if she asked?

So instead she refuses to swallow, and lets the spirit boy lick her throat, and feels something in her ache for something more.

“Eat?” he says, concerned, and Katara presses her lips tight together and her fingers get all tangled in his rough, knotted hair. His hair is the longest she's ever seen on a man, but of course he's not really a man, and she wishes she knew enough that she could just . . . could just lay back, and let him do what spirits do in all those stories. Except she doesn't know enough, not at _all_ , and the idea frightens her more than she likes to think about—what if it hurts, what if she's bad at it, what if he puts a baby in her, one that will slide out with a sleeksoft seal pelt and slip out of her arms for the ocean and never come back.

What if he doesn't _want_ to do what spirits do in all those stories?

The spirit boy whines concern into her ear, pressing close, and Katara wishes she knew if a seal boy would be more like a seal or a boy when it comes to . . . when those things are going to happen. Or should happen.

She wants them to happen. Maybe he will give her his pelt, if they do.

Maybe he will stay. Katara . . . she _needs_ the spirit boy to stay. But he is a spirit, and spirits never stay, and he is a boy and boys never stay either, in the end. They fall off the ice and drown, they go to war and die, they leave and do not come back. They _never_ come back.

She swallows, and cries. The spirit boy stays against her until the tears stop, licking every one away like he's cleaning blood from a wound, and Katara wants to cry forever but eventually she can't anymore. The spirit boy purrs against her cheek, the sound rumbling in his chest, through _her_ chest, and Katara shivers, but only actually feels cold when he pulls away. He will leave her, she knows, no matter what they do together.

She does not know why that makes her need to do it more.

When Katara looks up again the moon is lower but the sky is no less black, and there is still power reflecting on the waves. She lets it rock through her, the rhythm the closest thing to what she needs that she can have, and they lay together half on the ice and half in the snow, embraced perfectly by both. The spirit boy, as ever, is unbothered by the cold. Usually Katara would be freezing, but his body is warm and close and all she can think about, and his weather-roughened skin and water-bright eyes and even the dark snarls and tangles of his hair are all fascinating things, are the _most_ fascinating things, and she needs to memorize them all. This could be the last time, she reminds herself: he is a spirit and a boy and _any_ time could be the last time.

Katara looks at the spirit boy lying beside her, ethereal and luminous underneath the light that is the source of her power, dark against the snow and ice and water that surround him completely, that she can _feel_ him through.

She knows she will never see him again.

.

.

.

She sees him again.

.

.

.

And again.

.

.

.

Any excuse to touch him, Katara thinks, and packs her mother's comb when she goes to the water—the one that combed Mother's hair every day until the day she died, the one that combed Katara's brother's hair every day until the day _he_ died; the one Mother combed Father's hair and _Katara's_ hair with every day until the day she died. The spirit boy stares at it like he's trying to figure something out, or more likely like he's never seen a comb before in his life, and sits very still while Katara pulls it through his hair in long, careful strokes. The snarls and tangles are unconquerable, she knows just from the sight of them, but she spends the better part of the night trying anyway.

More of it untangles that she expected, and then a little more than that, and when she draws her fingers through it and it does not lock around her fingers and knot them up . . . when that happens, Katara almost cries.

She has never fixed something like that, she finds herself thinking, and then combs just to comb, long slow strokes that make the spirit boy's eyes heavy and his hair almost sleek. Without really thinking, she binds it back. A boy the age the spirit boy looks should be a new-made man, and so she tries to do the same half-wolftail her father wore—wears, wherever he is.

Not dead, she promises herself. Not dead, and not past tense.

Distracted, she doesn't leave the dangling strands she should, but instead ties loops like her own in. She startles when she realizes it and moves to correct the mistake, but the spirit boy grins and crosses his eyes to look at them, and then she doesn't and just ties the loose ends into his half-wolftail. The spirit boy's hair is still much longer than any man of the tribe's that Katara has ever known, down far past his shoulder blades and nearly to his waist, but of course it wouldn't be like a man of the tribe's anyway; of course it wouldn't be like _any_ man's.

She likes that he doesn't look like any man.

“Do you have a name?” she asks again.

“Ayem Katara!” the spirit boy says again, laughing. Katara thinks of fishing with him, of him doing the hunting her brother should've been alive to do, and thinks of what the ocean has taken from her. What the ocean has _given_ her.

“Sokka,” she says, and he gives her a sudden, startled look. “That should be your name.”

The spirit boy stares at her for a long time in some strange and inhuman way that Katara cannot define, and then finally nods. Then he leaves, and does not come back.

.

.

.

Katara waits a month, and then starts looking.

.

.

.

And looking.

.

.

.

And looking.

.

.

.

_“COWARD!”_ she screams from her sad little boat, the one she drags the fish into without him now, the one she practices her bending in under the moonlight with all the power of her pain and rows out too far to be rowing alone. The one that needs repaired, but she is not a boy and her brother is dead and her father is gone and all the men are gone, all the men and the only boy, and she wants to scream more than she wants anything else in the world. Wants to scream, to lash _out_ , to strike something from the world, take back just _one thing_ —

Katara screams, alone in the water, alone and with no one, no men and no boys, no _mother_ , no _anyone_ —

The iceberg behind her breaks open and light bursts forth, and when the resulting wave topples her boat and throws her overboard, the water catches her before she can even call it.

Arms _in_ the water catch her.

“Sokka?” she chokes out as she clings to him, dizzy and soaked and shocked from impact, and he stares past her at the rising light.

There is a boy in the iceberg.

There is a boy in the iceberg, and when they break him free and he falls into Katara's arms the same as she fell into Sokka's she has a feeling of epiphany like nothing else before. She stares at his unconscious face, and stares at Sokka, and is stared back at. This, some distant part of her thinks, is like waterbending for the first time.

This is what was missing and what she's waited for, here and now and in her arms.

The boy's eyes open, a strange and alien gray like Katara has never, ever seen reflected in another human being's face, and he smiles so bright and easy like the war has never even _touched_ him.

“Wanna go penguin sledding with me?” he asks, and Katara laughs because he might take it the wrong way if she cried.

.

.

.

“So he's _always_ naked?” Aang asks curiously after they've saved most of the penguins from Sokka's exceptionally dedicated attempts at eating them, trying not to wince as he watches him drag off one that'd gotten old and slow. At this point, Appa is hiding altogether. Katara's face turns hot, and she looks away.

“I'll make him a loincloth,” she says, uncharacteristically meek. It's the first time another person has seen Sokka, and she never thought about things like _clothes_ before—he is a spirit and a seal and even the fiercest cold never seemed to bother him, so what did he need with _clothes_?

Besides common decency, she guesses. But that's so . . . _human_.

Sokka's hair is tangled again, Katara notices, but still bound back the way she tied it. The hair loops slipped out and the half-wolftail is too loose and the ends are all knots, but his hair is still bound back the way she tied it all that time ago all the same. She feels warm in her gut again, and fixes it for him while Aang plays with the surviving penguins. Sokka purrs, heavy-eyed and content with her fingers in his hair, and kisses meat into her mouth after. He tries to do the same for Aang, which Aang doesn't take so well and is the first time Katara's ever heard of such a thing as a “vegetarian” but no more shocking than finding a living, breathing airbender, she supposes.

Well. Only a _little_ more.

Sokka runs off, and Aang tells Katara about the Southern Air Temple and doesn't know anything about the Avatar and Katara tells Aang about dancing with the moon and what the Fire Nation's done to her people, and then Sokka comes back and kisses Aang again, only this time it's with a mouthful of kelp and seaweed. Aang doesn't like the taste much and the kissing part flusters him, but he still seems to appreciate the effort to be taken care of anyway. Katara watches and feels . . . odd, in a way, and isn't sure if it's jealous-odd or something else. It should be jealous, she thinks—Sokka has always been just _hers_ —but she really doesn't know.

“He's really friendly, isn't he?” Aang asks, laughing sheepishly, and Katara smiles a little because . . . because it's hard to be jealous, she supposes, when she waited so long for anyone even _close_ to her own age, and now she has _two_ people her own age and one's a spirit and one's a _bender_ —a bending _master_. She can't be jealous, with that.

She's probably never been so happy, actually.

“He's a seal spirit,” she says, and Aang gives her a confused look. “He helps me fish so I can feed my village.”

“That's . . . nice,” Aang says, frowning.

“I don't know his real name,” she admits quietly. “Sokka's just what I call him, after my brother who . . . it's just what I call him.” Aang keeps frowning and looks back to Sokka, who's sunning lazily on Appa's back. Appa got over the penguin-sledding carnage, Katara guesses.

“Did he tell you he was a seal spirit?” Aang asks, and Katara gives him a puzzled look.

“Well, it was pretty obvious,” she says. “He never gets cold in the water or snow, and sometimes I hear him talk to other seals. I didn't even know he _could_ talk like a human at first.”

“Oh,” Aang replies, looking uncomfortable. Katara frowns.

“Aang?” she asks.

“Um,” Aang says, and his eyes slant away. “I don't think he's a spirit.”

“Of course he's a spirit,” Katara says, frowning. “What else would he be?”

“Human?” Aang looks embarrassed. “He's human. I can fe—I mean, he seems it.” Katara gives him a disbelieving look; if there is one thing Sokka will _never_ seem, it's “human”. Aang seems to understand the expression, because he looks even more embarrassed.

“He came from the ocean and he talks to seals,” Katara tells him. “He _has_ to be a spirit.”

“I don't think he is,” Aang repeats, still looking embarrassed. Katara scowls. Sokka _is_ a seal spirit, she _knows_ it, he is special and powerful and just like Mom's stories, he isn't—he isn't just some _human_ lost on the ice. There's only the tribe here anyway, he _can't_ be human because if he were human he would've come _from_ the tribe and it's not like anyone's misplaced a son old enough for his manhood rites, they don't even _have_ any of those, they're all—they're all—

“Katara!” Aang exclaims in shock, and she feels the tears a moment after he's already seen them and tries to cover her face. Sokka's already there and leaning in to lick them away, though, so instead her hands hover lost in the air and don't go anywhere.

“You are a spirit, aren't you?” she asks helplessly, more tears welling up, and Sokka's tongue drags flat up the curve of her cheek. “Sokka?”

“I Sokka,” he replies, nuzzling behind her ear.

“But are you a _spirit_?” Katara stresses. Sokka hesitates, looking for the words, and she wants to cry again for no definable reason.

“I Sokka,” he repeats, gesturing with his hands to pantomime a story. “Sokka-pup can't swim. Splash, no swim! Water-mama swim. Water-mama catch. Sokka-pup can't hunt. Water-mama hunt. Water-mama feed!”

“'Water-mama'?” Katara repeats weakly, something in her shaken.

“Second mama,” Sokka clarifies, still pantomiming along with his story. It helps, a little, but Katara still feels blank. “Water-mama! Ice-mama gone. Ice-mama have new pup, time for Sokka-pup to go. But Sokka-pup can't swim yet! But Water-mama lost her pup, so Water-mama has time for Sokka-pup.”

“. . . wait. You were raised by _leopard seals_?” Aang asks, his strange gray eyes shining while Katara's all dazed and wild and spun-apart and can't quite think. “Oh _wow_! Uh—any chance your Water-mama would let me ride he—”

_“AANG!”_

“Sorry, sorry, it's a reflex!”

.

.

.

Sokka is not a spirit. This thought occupies Katara's mind even more than Aang's strange gray eyes and effortless mastery of his bending, even more than Sokka's own mouth kissing meat into hers or the feeling of her mother's unwilling absence or her father's willing one, and even more than the lack of feeling for the absence of the brother who died when she was too young to remember.

Sokka is a boy like _her_ Sokka, who fell off the ice and drowned. But didn't drown, because he was lucky, because for _him_ the water sent a savior, because _him_ the spirits saw fit to spare.

But not her brother.

Katara manages not to cry, but only because she's had so much practice at it, and takes Aang back to the village. Sokka follows at first, but gets distracted halfway and runs off across the snow to vanish underneath the ice—he never comes as far as the village. She's never known anyone who could hold their breath as long as him, Katara thinks distantly as she watches him disappear; seven or eight minutes at most, and she's even heard about people who got trapped under the ice and survived a lot longer, but most of them never fully recovered.

Katara has seen Sokka stay under the water for half an hour, diving deeper and swimming faster than any human she's ever known—any _other_ human, apparently. Maybe he has a piece of spirit in him after all, she thinks, wondering. Maybe when he fell in, his mama threw her skin back on and went in after him, and then they couldn't come back again?

But he has no skin of his own, and no skin he will ever give her.

No promise to stay.

Katara thinks about Sokka's younger sibling, the “pup” he thought had replaced him, and imagines how lonely it would be to be that child, watching their brother and mother swim away without them. How lonely it would be to be _Sokka_ , thinking you weren't _worth_ that child. That you weren't enough reason to stay or worth keeping or . . .

Aang says something, and Katara shakes her head fast and tries to smile, but it doesn't work out so well. He's pointing towards something, veering away from the village, and Katara follows because it's easier than thinking about lost and abandoned things. It's the Fire Nation ship they're forbidden from entering, she realizes belatedly, but Aang's already halfway there and, well . . . come on, it's been here since Gran-Gran was a _girl_. It can't actually be _dangerous_ anymore.

She really regrets that thought, after.

.

.

.

The black metal bow of what must be the only working Fire Nation ship in the entire South breaks the ice of the shore, and Katara grips the hunting spear her father left behind and wishes she knew how to use it. If it's anything, it's just a totem, a reminder of an absent father to hold and hold on to. Aang is wide-eyed and worried beside her, gripping his folded glider even tighter than she's gripping the spear, and Katara wants to step in front of him and stand between him and the dark-armored figures stepping down into the snow with sizzling metal boots.

Of course they would come during midnight sun. Of _course_.

“Get _out_ of here!” she shouts at them, terrified of countless things—Aang getting hurt, Gran-Gran dying, _any_ of their people getting hurt or dying, getting hurt or dying _herself_ or being dragged away in a net, bound up tight and taken away from her tribe and the ice and snow and water, locked up in metal chains and maybe executed or maybe just never allowed to bend again or—

“Where is the Avatar?” the man in the lead asks, voice low and rasp-edged, but not as low as she'd have expected.

He's a boy, she realizes in confusion, spear almost wavering for a moment. A boy no older than Sokka, and maybe not even that. She didn't think . . . why is he a _boy_?

“We don't know,” she says, hating the words even as she speaks them, hating the terrible, heartbreaking _truth_ of them and the way Aang stands so tense and frightened at her side. “Why would we know that? It's been a hundred _years_ , they'd have left us and stopped you by now.”

The boy snorts derisively, and Katara wishes he'd never come here. And while she's wishing for things she'll never have, she'd like her family all back and a full moon and to be a waterbending master with a dozen other master benders beside her, too.

None of those things will ever come to her, though, and so instead Katara grits her teeth and steels herself with the memory of bending under the moonlight while waiting for Sokka to come and kiss her.

“Leave,” she says, plunging her spear into the snow, and her voice is low and rasp-edged too.

“Katar—” Aang starts anxiously, and the boy in armor glares down at her and steps forward all threat and no mercy, and Katara thinks of moonlight and quick kisses and the tide in her blood. There is nothing she can do, not against a shipful of firebenders; not against even _one_ firebender. There is nothing she can do, and she is alone. She can't expect a monk to fight, especially can't expect him to fight someone _else's_ fight, and the women . . .

They should be able to fight, she thinks—it's _wrong_ that they can't. Their men left them with nothing, they took all the best weapons and all their knowledge of war and _abandoned_ them, left their survival to chance. The Fire Nation _made_ them do that, Katara thinks painfully, memory-moon thrumming in her blood as the boy in red armor reaches out to grab her, close enough now that she can see the burn scar smeared across his face under the shadow of his helmet—a wound she would never expect; a wound she would be sorry for, on another face. Proof of how awful these people really are, on this one.

Katara's feet flex against the packed snow—the snow his too-hot boots have melted down into—and she breathes out. The boy jerks, stumbling as snow and meltwater freeze solid around his ankles and trap him in place. He looks down, good eye widening in shock, and Katara inhales and calls for the tide, feels it surge beneath the Fire Nation ship and against the shore.

She's had nothing but her waterbending for so long. No mother or father to comfort her, no brother or other children to grow up beside, no friends or boys her own age to grip her hands and pull her close and promise everything will definitely, definitely be alright. No other place to send it all, her grief and her need and her sorrow—no other place to put the terrible and crushing force of her broken heart.

She will _show_ them what happens when you do that to people, she thinks as the boy's eyes turn back to her, molten gold and fury beneath the shadow of a wave.

Midnight sun, Katara remembers as he screams fire at her, and the tide comes crashing in.

.

.

.

Katara regains consciousness slumped against a dull metal floor, arms chained behind her back and head swimming, feeling dried out and drained and so _stupid_.

And thrumming, somewhere too far down in her blood.

She's never been in a fight before.

She remembers the boy in armor—Zuko, someone called him that, she thinks past the headache, _Prince_ Zuko—she remembers Zuko spitting fire at her and the water rising and falling with the slash of her arms, the hissing steam in every place they clashed; remembers the water being _everywhere_ and so much of it, almost _too_ much because if she could take it from anywhere, where _should_ she take it from? Remembers melting ice and rising steam and Aang crying out in alarm, and the moment she'd been distracted by that.

She also remembers the dozen firebenders who'd spent the whole time waiting in silence for the order to end it.

There'd never been a chance of winning. Katara knows that—she isn't _stupid_ —but she couldn't have just let them come. They always think they can just come. As if they deserve it, as if it's their _right_ , as if no one in the world has the strength or authority to keep them back. Like they can just do _anything_ and that's _normal_.

It isn't normal.

Mom being _dead_ isn't _normal_.

Katara is never, ever letting that be normal.

She pushes herself up as best she can with her chained-back arms and looks around her cell; it's small, but open, and there's no water at all. The room and the air in it are as dry as petrified bones—petrified _air_ , raw and stifling and painful to breathe.

Breathe.

Aang's in the cell across the hall, and he is a small and crumpled thing inside it.

“Aang!” she blurts in horror, and his head snaps up and relief lights his face.

“Katara, you're okay!” he says, and she laughs because no, she's really _not_ , and also it's not like he needs to _tell_ her that either way, it's _her_ , she _knows_.

She wishes Sokka were here. Except she's really, really glad he's not.

“I'm okay,” she agrees, and pulls at the chains. Aang shifts anxiously, leaning against his own chains to get closer to her and looking so guilty.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I tried to make them leave you, but I couldn't fight them there, your whole _village_ was there. And I couldn't get you away unconscious, you were too heavy—I mean, um, not that you're _heavy_ I just—”

“It's not your fault, Aang,” Katara says, forcing her voice not to waver and her shoulders not to slump and her lungs to keep breathing petrified air. He should've flown away; he shouldn't have gotten into the middle of it. He's an _airbender_ , he could've escaped any time he wanted to. _Should've_ escaped. She should've _told_ him to escape. Stupid.

She's so stupid.

She closes her eyes; thinks of the moon, bright and full and lost to her beneath the light of the midnight sun. Thinks of Sokka, lost to her too, and Aang right here and _needing_ her, needing her because she's the one who got him into this, because this is on her. She didn't keep him from the ship, she didn't tell him to hide when the Fire Nation came, and she didn't even tell him to run—she didn't take _care_ of him like she should have, when for so long all she'd wanted was to have something _left_ to take care of.

Instead she called up ice and water and crashed into a boy who steamed and sizzled in the snow, and only thought about how she could finally hurt someone, just this once.

She's wanted to hurt someone for so long.

“It's not your fault,” she says again, because she has nothing else to say.

“Yes it is,” Aang says, voice terrifyingly small. Katara starts to open her mouth, repeat herself, _no it's not, you're just a kid_ , but then she really _hears_ that tone of voice.

Her eyes snap open. Aang's curled up on himself as tight as he can get, hugging his knees and not looking at her.

“I'm the Avatar,” he says.

Katara stares at him—the Avatar, the one surviving airbender, the personification of her grandmother's stories, of her every secret desire and hopeless hope— _Aang_ —and wishes Sokka were here. Wishes so _badly_ that Sokka were here.

“Oh,” she says, and Aang keeps looking anywhere but at her.

The air is still as dry as bones.

.

.

.

Everything is dry as bones.

.

.

.

There's no water.

There's no water.

There's no water.

“Katara? Are you okay?”

“There's no _water_ ,” Katara mutters into the floor, head throbbing. She is dried-out and barren, devoid of life and soul, there is no _water_ how can there _not_ be _water_ —

There is _always_ water. She's never . . . there's never not been water. Snow and ice and ocean and Sokka's hands holding her hands and holding her steady in the waves, the sun setting gracefully to let the moon light the night, there's _always_ water.

But this room is hot and dry and has no water.

“Katara?” Aang's voice is so _small_. Katara's fingers tremble in their chains, and she tries to think of home, of Gran-Gran and Sokka and the women and children. Of Mom and Dad and _that_ Sokka and the men. They would not accept this, she tells herself. They would not. They would take up their weapons and go to war; they would go to Aang and pull him close and tell him stories about seal-voiced boys and destined heroes and penguin-sledding and anything that would make that smallness in _his_ voice go away.

She'd wanted something to take care of.

She'd wanted it so _bad_.

_“Katara!”_

.

.

.

A man's hand cups her face, gentle and reassuring, and water pours over her forehead in cool and crystalline perfection. Katara could _cry_ , and can think of only one man who that hand should belong to.

“Dad?” she manages hoarsely, and tries to open her eyes. Water drips heavy off her lashes, and through the blur she sees a solemn, compassionate face belonging to an old man in red. He is holding a damp rag, and a shallow bowl of water sits on the floor beside him.

She almost vomits, but it makes more sense to lash out instead and she scythes a leg out sharp to claim the water and—

Then she thinks of Aang, needing her, and doesn't.

The man is looking at her in a way that makes no sense, coming from Fire Nation eyes.

“Is that better, my dear?” he asks. “I've never known waterbenders to do well in these particular cells.”

“Let us go,” she says. The man looks sad, and like he could laugh. Cry? Laugh.

“I am afraid that is not my choice,” he says, but says in a way that Katara _knows_ he's a liar—he could let them go, could get them out of here, it wouldn't even be _hard_ for him, she can _tell_. Just from the way he says it she can tell. Maybe he even wants to, a little.

But he's not going to. They are in chains and he is not changing that. Gentle hands and perfect water mean nothing, and he is no different from any other Fire Nation sailor or soldier or sadist.

“Then leave us alone,” she says, and turns her face away. Water trickles cool down her face again and she despises everything in red just that little bit more, even as the touch of it clears her head and soothes the dry, cracking ache inside her. The man's hands are gentle in the worst and cruelest way, and she wishes he were at least _trying_ to be harsh.

“Katara?” Aang says, his voice too close to a tremble, and Katara almost cries.

“I'm okay, Aang,” she lies. The Fire Nation man pours water into her hair, and she almost strikes him but doesn't. He could kill her so easily, as easily as one quick snap or one quick sear, and all she can think about is Aang having to see that. All she can think about is being _meat_ , nothing with life or soul left to it, nothing to be kissed.

She wants to be kissed again.

She wants to see _Sokka_ again.

“These cells are kept drier than the others,” the man says. “It's a bit of a shock for a waterbender from the poles, I expect.” Katara laughs, ugly and _mean_ —a bit of a _shock_? This is not shock; this is _torture_. But firebenders are always with their element, so she wouldn't expect anyone Fire to understand that.

“I don't get it,” Aang says in that awful small voice, and Katara remembers that airbenders are always with _their_ element, too.

“To you I imagine the experience would be something like flying too high, to where the air is too thin to breathe,” the man tells him. “Being slowly suffocated or drowning.”

_He's TWELVE,_ Katara wants to snarl, _he's twelve why are you SAYING things like that to him, he's twelve and he should NEVER have to feel like that, never have to understand that, he's just a KID. And I'm just a kid. And you're going to kill us._ Instead she grits her teeth, and breathes ice over the backs of them. She wants to be frozen shut, to never thaw again—not for anything, ever.

Not until Sokka kisses her again.

.

.

.

The man goes away. Aang tries to talk to her.

Katara stares at dull metal walls through petrified air, and doesn't say a thing.

.

.

.

And doesn't.

.

.

.

And doesn't.

.

.

.

And . . .

.

.

.

Katara's breath catches awkwardly, and she tastes meltwater on her tongue and thinks dark thoughts, and bright thoughts, and murky gray ones that are worst of all.

“It's time to get out of here,” she says as the last of the ice melts off her teeth, and Aang jerks upright in his chains.

“I can't bend,” he says, lifting his chained wrists.

“Liar,” she says.

“But I—”

_“Breathe,”_ she says, and curls her fingers.

Her soaked-through braid curls with them.

.

.

.

She misses Sokka.

.

.

.

Katara has never treated her bending so much like a weapon as she does today, crashing through the halls of the ship—riding waves the way she learned fishing with Sokka, where he was always in the water to catch her. And she wants to be in the water again, and she wants him to catch her, but she can't have that, not unless she _gets_ there, and there isn't enough fire in the _world_ to keep her from that, she swears to herself. Steam and condensation strip from the walls and pipes as she races past them, break out _of_ the pipes to race after _her_ and crash into her waves and carry her forward, painfully hot and freezing cold and a destroyer of petrified air and dried-out bones, a joy and a fury and a way to find the way.

Aang is a force in the air behind her, the wind at her back pushing her through and pushing through the soldiers in their way, and Sokka is a force _inside_ her, the thing she's yearning for. Katara could go through anything to get to him. She _will_ go through anything, if she has to.

“Anything” mostly consists of sailors she and Aang don't give enough time to firebend before crashing through and over, but after burned mothers and drowned brothers and runaway fathers and a boy's kiss, that ease is no surprise. They took her out on the _ocean_. The place she disappears into every night, the home that's cradled her ever since her real home stopped being one. They took her out on the ocean and didn't keep her pinned down and surrounded, and they gave her a drop of water and something to fight for and no women and children to worry about the lives of.

What did they _think_ was going to happen?

Katara bursts out onto the deck, Aang tearing into the air above her head, and the ocean _sings_ around her. Prince Zuko comes down on top of them bright with rage and fire and all the power of the midnight sun roaring out of his armored body, and some distant, quiet part of Katara wonders if it feels anything like the moon, to him.

She can't imagine how it could.

“You're not getting off this ship, Avatar,” he says, looking right past her. _Idiot,_ Katara thinks, bright and clear, and hurls the full force of her wave into his face. Zuko goes down hard, skidding back across the deck with the horrible sizzling screech of wet metal against hot, sparks kicked up in his wake, and she throws herself after to press the advantage. Katara doesn't have much experience fighting, except for this afternoon and little childhood games and wrestling with Sokka, but that much she knows.

She also knows she would never even have gotten this far if anyone on this ship had _any_ idea how to handle an airbender, or even just a little bit better a memory of handling _water_ benders. The Southern waterbenders haven't been to the war, not in decades, but Katara knows they were there once and none of these men are young. But they're not there anymore, they're not a part of the war, they're just fading memories in old men's minds like a slippery fish escaping their grasping hands. No unforgettable last stand, no legendary wild fight, no world-shaking one-strike victory for the Fire Nation, nothing to remember them in the eyes of the world—they're just not there anymore.

They're not _here_ anymore.

Katara holds on to that loss, and wields the weight of it against this vicious, conquering boy who'd never seen a waterbender before today. She crashes down with all her waves and grief and anger and he rises up to meet her with more than enough anger of his own and then it's the shore again. The shore, the ice, them both doing their best to hurt each other between the shadow of his ship and her cracked and crumbling village; between the shadow of her dead mother and destroyed home and his armored killers waiting underneath black snow and midnight sun.

She can be their last stand all by herself, if she has to.

_“Katara!”_ Aang shouts, the swing of his staff hurling half a dozen sailors back into the rail and more than one of them straight over it. Katara thinks dreamily of the shocking, fire-dousing freeze of polar water, and hears them cry out as they fall. But there are still more sailors on deck, the ones rushing in crackling with fire and pressing Aang back towards the door, and Aang only has so much room to swing that staff where the fire won't reach it.

Katara calls water up the sides of the ship, ice freezing around them and waves pouring onto the deck and over the firebenders advancing on Aang, and thinks she just might die. She's never bent this much water before, never even _tried_ to—but she's been in the ocean under the full moon with a boy who is/is not a spirit, is/is not a seal, is/is not a boy her age. She's been in the ocean with the full moon in her blood and Sokka's mouth on her mouth.

She's bent the water she was born in, and kissed a boy she needs to get back to.

There is nothing they can do to stop her, she thinks in that same dreamy way as before, and Zuko's next strike slams her face-first into the deck.

_“KATARA!”_ Aang screams, and past the ringing in her head Katara manages to think, _if you were a seal you would not care about unimportant things like this_ , but doesn't have the breath to get the words out.

_Aang,_ she thinks as her hands fumble for the purchase to push her back to her feet, as her body refuses to listen past the ringing in her head, as Zuko steps towards her with fire on his fists and fury in his eyes, and into the waves she mutters: “Sokka.”

Appa crashes down onto the deck with an ear-splitting bellow and swings his tail the same way Aang swung his staff, except this time _every_ sailor gets blown into the rail. Katara sees Zuko's head slam into the deck even harder than hers did, and something vicious in her _revels_. Aang grabs her arm, pulling her to her feet, and she thinks about vomiting but decides running is okay too, except then air's pushing them off the ground in a wild leap into Appa's saddle and wait, they're running _away_?

_“No!”_ she snarls, struggling out of his grip and reaching for water that spikes into erratically bladed ice under her shaken control. They have to hurt, they have to suffer, what they did what they _do_ —

“Katara, _don't_!” Aang cries, grabbing her shoulder, and she shoves an elbow back unthinkingly to make him recoil and bursts the ice into hurled knives that shatter against metal armor and slice through leather and flesh and sizzle into nothing in fire.

“Get _back_ here!” Zuko roars, stumbling forward across the slick deck all steam and heat, and Katara brings her arms crashing down and sweeps him straight over the side with a wave that's more ice than water. A group of the remaining sailors charge from the other side and Appa lets out another bellow, blasting them over the opposite rail with a wind like a hurricane as Aang scrambles for his reins.

“Appa, _yip-yip_!” he practically shrieks, sounding so young and scared and it's so unfair that the Fire Nation makes people sound that way, and Katara hates them so much for it. Ice like knives lashes at sailors' exposed hands and faces and freezes their feet to the deck to make them fall and it's _still not enough_ —

Appa leaps into the air and tears off across the sky so fast Katara's knocked back in the saddle and loses her grip on the water, and she lets out a soft little gasp as her aching head hits hard leather.

“Sorry,” Aang blurts, fumbling with the reins, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, are you okay?”

“My head hurts,” Katara replies reproachfully, still staring up at the sky. It's even bluer than the water. Not that water's always all that blue. Bluer than the _soul_ of water: the purest and best-known form of it.

“I'm sorry,” Aang says again, small and miserable.

“You're the _Avatar_ ,” Katara accuses, finally looking at him again, and he looks just as small and miserable as he sounds. A child, not an Avatar; someone soft and gentle and not made for fear and violence. A little boy who likes to play, not a man who knows how to win a war.

“I'm sorry,” Aang says one last time, this time in the quietest, most ashamed whisper Katara's ever heard outside of her own head. His eyes are wide and broken-hearted and the soft gray of the coming rain.

She wants to cry again, but mostly she wants Sokka.

.

.

.

“Good boy, Appa,” Aang says when they land, burying his face in Appa's side.

“I can't believe he found us,” Katara says, staring at the shore she'd thought she'd never see again, wondering if this isn't where they should be. It can't be safe to be here; for the village _or_ them—for Sokka, who's not a spirit after all but definitely a boy, and who just might do something stupid if he saw men in armor tracking black snow through their home.

“Yeah, me neither,” Aang replies, hugging Appa tighter for a moment. “ _Good_ boy.” Appa wasn't even there when they were taken, Katara remembers, and then really _does_ wonder how he found them.

Then again, flying bison. She's seen weirder. She's _kissed_ weirder.

Sokka.

“I need to find Sokka,” she says, fingers tense against her thighs. She hasn't seen him since before the flare went up—she doesn't know where he is or where he was _then_ , and for all she knows . . . for all she knows he _already_ did something stupid, for all she knows Zuko's clumsy and vicious ship crushed him under the ice, for all she knows he's—he's—

She starts walking, fast, and heads right for the one place Sokka will always be, or at least the one place he'll be when he's anywhere. As soon as she knows he's okay, then she can concentrate on things like how Appa found them and if it's safe to be here and what they should do now and how hungry and tired and scared she is right now. None of those things matter until she knows Sokka's okay anyway.

Aang hurries after her, but stays back a step further than before. Katara almost wonders why, but just doesn't have the room: Sokka, is he here, is he anywhere, is he _okay_?

“Are you sure it's okay to be back here?” Aang asks nervously, and Katara whips around and for one terrible instant _almost_ hits him. Almost.

It's only almost, but having the thought at all feels as horrible as if she had.

“It's fine, Aang,” she manages, and tries not to think about the way her face must have looked to make his look like _that_. “They won't even be able to all get back on _board_ for a while, and they're still stuck in the ice once they are.”

“But they saw us fly this way,” Aang says uncomfortably. “I mean, I didn't think about it before but . . .”

“It's fine,” Katara manages again, and somehow even keeps her voice from cracking.

“Okay,” Aang says, looking at his feet. Katara takes a breath and forces back the tears threatening to break out of her and just keeps walking. Sokka. She is going to find Sokka. He's okay or he's not, but her life can't go on until she knows either way. _Nothing_ can go on until she knows either way.

And if these monsters have taken something else from her, they'll never know safe waters again.

.

.

.

They make it to the shore where the moon thrums in Katara's blood as she waits for Sokka, and he's not there. The sight of it bare and deserted almost makes her scream, but instead she slams her fist into the snow and a wave of ice crashes all the way to the water. There's no reason for it except that she can't _stand_ it. This. _Any_ of this, she will tear them apart, she will freeze the blood in their veins, she will fill them with ice and _pain_ and—

“Katara!” Sokka chirps, bobbing up out of the water just past her jagged frozen wave and beaming across the shore at them as he shoves a freshly-killed koala otter onto the shore. Katara's knees give out, and she collapses into the snow.

“Sokka,” she says numbly.

“Sokka!” Aang cries in relief, and Sokka scrambles up on shore and hurries over to them, still beaming brightly. Katara watches him from someplace inside and can't think anymore—everything else wore her out too much, everything else _was_ too much, but Sokka is alive and Sokka is okay and that's everything. That's the world in her hands, in her _heart_ , and she wants to cry at the sight of him. Or kill something.

“Appa get okay?” Sokka asks, leaning in and nosing curiously at Katara's hair. He's looking for injuries, she thinks absently, but locks her arms around him hard enough to yank him down into the snow with her anyway. He yelps; she just buries her face in his neck and holds on harder. “Katara!”

“Appa got us okay,” Aang manages. “ _Really_ okay, we don't even know how he _found_ us.”

“Sokka follow!” Sokka replies cheerfully, pointing back towards the water. Katara stares at him. “Sokka see Katara and Aang on bringer-of-black-snow, go follow. Bringer-of-black-snow smell wrong, so Sokka call Appa. Appa come!”

“You kept up with a Fire Nation ship?” Katara asks faintly, still staring at him. Kept up with a Fire Nation ship and talked to a _sky bison_. That . . . what _was_ that?

“That bringer-of-black-snow?” Sokka asks with a curious expression, and Katara nods in reply, a little dumbly. “Then yes! Is fast. But Sokka fast too.”

“And you said he wasn't a spirit,” Katara says to Aang with a shaken laugh, covering her face with her hands. Keeping up with a Fire Nation ship at full speed, talking to a _sky bison_ —this morning no one in the world even knew any more sky bison _existed_ , and this afternoon Sokka _talked_ to one. There is no way he is something as simple as human.

Except even if he is, he is still so much better than something simple.

Or just the simplest thing, sometimes.

“Sokka,” she murmurs, embracing him all over again, and Sokka laughs and nuzzles into her hard enough that it hurts a little, which is still not hard enough at all. “I'm so glad you're okay.”

“Is fine! Come see present!” Sokka says brightly, butting his head against hers once and then escaping her arms much too easily—but Sokka swims in freezing polar water and breaks through months-old ice, and much as she wishes it Katara is still not as strong as her element can be. He scrambles back to his kill and snatches it up, and Katara follows him, assuming the koala otter is what he was talking about. Sokka immediately dives into the water, though, koala otter in his teeth, and swims out among the floating ice.

Katara blinks, and looks at Aang who is already looking at her. She can't imagine what other “present” Sokka would have for them besides meat, but Aang just shrugs and then she shrugs too, and kicks a piece of ice off the shore to skate after the rapidly-disappearing Sokka—she's a strong swimmer too, but he is _so_ much faster. Aang leaps ridiculously high and lands even more ridiculously lightly behind her on the ice, and Katara smiles when his hand catches on the back of her parka to steady himself.

Katara is still not used to people this close to her own age, and now she has _two_. And not just any people, _boys_ ; and not just any boys but _impossible_ boys; boys who can hold their breath forever and knock down fully-armored soldiers _with_ a breath and talk to sky bison and maybe even save the _world_ —

She exhales, and the two of them keep skimming gracefully across the surface of the water in Sokka's wake, following the path he cuts through the push-and-pull tide as Appa swims languidly after them, utterly unhurried. Sokka scrambles up onto an ice floe in the middle of all the slush and meltwater and broken-up bits, a cracked and dangerous-looking thing, and Katara washes them up behind him, their ice raft vanishing beneath their feet and into the surface of the floe. It's flat, mostly, but Sokka heads straight into the craggier parts in the middle with a trilling greeting call, and Katara's heartbeat picks up reflexively. She pictures lounging seals or maybe Sokka's ice-and-water-mama with her skin off, waiting, and cannot decide if it is excitement or fear in her but rushes to catch up with him all the same.

It is not Sokka's mother.

“Oh!” Aang exclaims, his eyes widening in shock, and Sokka drops the koala otter next to the battered and bare-armed body dressed in dark red and crumpled in the snow just like that broken-necked koala otter, stripped of all defense and much, much too still. Like a bloodstain, Katara thinks distantly, remembering what they'd left of her mother, and then sees the _actual_ bloodstains.

“Present!” Sokka says gleefully, beaming proudly at her, and Katara stares. She recognizes the body—there was only one firebender on that whole ship small enough to be this body, it's not hard—and she remembers sweeping this body over the edge of the deck in a blast of ice. Remembers Aang's scared voice, and sorry one, and he . . . and he wasn't even any older than Sokka, she thinks, and he screamed _fire_ at her, she thinks, and . . .

She swallows, and grips the front of her parka.

“We don't eat—we can't eat that, Sokka,” she says unevenly _(deserved, of course, it's only fair they suffer TOO, only fair this horrible not-normal they force on the world means THEY die TOO)_ , and Aang makes a cracked little noise and Sokka frowns for a second, then laughs, although Katara can't tell why. Maybe he thinks she's kidding.

“Not for _eat_!” he says, still laughing, and Aang kneels next to the body with an expression of terrible _sadness_ , and Katara wants to comfort him somehow but it's just . . .

Her head is full of her mother and blood over black snow, and this is only fair.

“Katara!” Aang exclaims, grabbing the body, and Katara startles at the sudden volume and nearly recoils.

“What?! What's wrong?!” she demands, grabbing his shoulder, and he pushes at the body and it _spills_ , and its limbs scatter and its head falls back limp against the snow, and a weak lick of flame escapes its mouth.

Aang breathes out in relief, and Katara _screams_.

“He's _alive_?!” she shrieks, reflexively kicking out, and Aang tackles her back into the snow with a yelp before her foot or the blade-bright ice following it can connect.

“Katara, don't, he's hurt!” he protests, and Katara nearly kicks _him_ , struggling back up in a panic because she cannot, cannot, _cannot_ be off-guard and defenseless like that in front of a firebender, _never_ — _“Katara!”_

“He's their captain!” she snarls, eyes wide with rage, braid messy and half-frozen in her panic and fury, snow all over it and her parka and sticking to her skin in little frost patterns. “He's their _prince_!”

“He's _hurt_!” Aang shouts again, trying to hold her back, trying to keep her down and trapped and is he _crazy_ he'll get them all _killed_ this way what kind of Avatar _is_ he, and Sokka watches them with a puzzled expression, head tilted.

“Thought you _want_ ice-brother,” he says, and Katara freezes and— _don't,_ , she thinks, _don't say—_ “He can be Sokka!”

“No,” Katara says, all the cold rushing in.

“But bringer-of-black-snow does not want!” Sokka protests indignantly, his intentions cutting her like maybe nothing else ever could. “And ice-brother cannot swim!”

_“He is NOT an ice-brother!”_ Katara roars, jerking to her feet in an explosion of ice and snow, and Sokka and Aang both recoil in shock, Sokka so far back he nearly falls off the edge of the floe. For a second she feels a flash of guilt, but they're just both so—how can they be like this? How don't they _know_?

“Fire-brother?” Sokka tries, eyes wide and wary, and Katara deflates and then just collapses in on herself, shoulders slumping and head hanging and eyes just shy of burning. Of course tears would _burn_ , some distant part of her thinks. Of course.

She doesn't want to scare them. How is _she_ the scary thing here?

“No,” she says, turning away and wrapping her arms around herself like Mom would do if Mom weren't dead, fighting back the burn, the pain they draw all their power from. “You're— _Sokka_ was Sokka.”

And no one in the Fire Nation was _anyone's_ brother. Not even the kind who went and drowned on you before you ever knew them.

“They're not worthy of it,” Katara says through gritted teeth, tightening her grip on her shoulders, and Sokka makes a disappointed noise.

“Make bad Sokka?” he asks, and Katara nods mutely and does not look back to him.

“How did he get hurt this bad?” Aang asks, like always worried about the wrong thing. “He wasn't bleeding when he went over the railing.”

“Ice,” Sokka says, and Katara glances back just in time to catch the broad, dramatic gestures that he summarizes the story with. “Fire not-brother fall, break through and sink! Can't swim at all! So Sokka get.”

“You should've let him drown,” Katara says, glaring burning-eyed down at the battered and dark red representation of every horrible thing that has ever been, spilled blood and black snow and the people who never come here without bringing both. “We should drown him _now_.”

“No!” Aang protests, horrified, and Katara grits her teeth again and _how is she the scary thing?_

“They're _monsters_ , Aang,” she bites off harshly. “He wanted to take you back to the Fire Nation.”

“He's _hurt_!” Aang says in frustration, clenching his fists and looking so young and not close to her age at all, just another child to take care of. “And even if he wasn't that doesn't matter, you can't just _kill_ people!”

“That's what _they_ do!” Katara snaps, bristling and trying not to but he is just so—he's the Avatar. How doesn't he _know_ these things? “What else do you think we're going to do, the moment he wakes up he's going to try to kill _us_!”

“He hasn't tried to kill _anyone_!” Aang yells, fists jerking and the air around them jerking with them. “ _Look_ at him, Katara, he's still _bleeding_!”

_“I don't CARE!”_ Katara yells back, and Aang looks like . . . like what? Like she's hurting him. Like she's some awful person for trying to protect him and Sokka and herself and everyone here? Like that's _bad_? There are no men left and the women can't fight, except for her. Except she isn't strong enough, and can't _do_ enough.

There's only one of her. Even here and now with a seal-boy and a bloodstained prince and an airbending _Avatar_ , she's only one.

“So no fire-ice-brother?” Sokka asks, and Katara grimaces and digs her fingers into her arms. She understands, she thinks, or almost does—he must've overheard her with Aang at some point, drawn the conclusions he thought were logical from that—but really? Really, he thought a Fire Nation _prince_ was the “brother” to bring her?

Really, he thought she needed anyone but him?

“No,” she says. “He's Fire Nation. They only hurt people. Even if we helped him, he'd hurt us after.”

“We don't know that,” Aang says. “And even if we _did_ it still doesn't matter.”

“How does that _not matter_?!” Katara demands incredulously, but of course she knows how he can think that, he is twelve years old and his mother did not die spilled on the snow and his father did not run away to the war and he is not _alone_ here. Aang's probably never been alone; he's the Avatar. There's always someone with him, even if it's just another part of himself.

“It's still not right to kill him,” Aang says, and then he doesn't look young at all. But he is. Only someone _that_ young could really think that, Katara knows.

“Then we—” she starts, but he cuts her off right away.

“Or let him die, either,” he says. Katara stiffens, fingers curling _hard_ in her gloves, and wants to scream again. At him or nothing, she's not sure which.

Aang's so young. Even looking at her with those too-old eyes, he's so _young_. She doesn't know how that works, if it's the echo of his past lives or a trick of the light or something harder to define, but she knows it's wrong. She'd know even without the sight of the melting ice and snow underneath the body of the prince who tried to take Aang away—tried to take _them_ away. Put them in a dry, dry cell and left them there, and wasn't ever going to let them out.

Like every other Southern waterbender they didn't kill the way they killed her mother.

“Oh well,” Sokka says, and pushes Zuko off the ice floe.

_“No!”_ Aang yells, jerking forward with a horrified expression, and Katara sees that expression in the same moment she realizes that watching Sokka push him in was the first time she thought of Zuko by name since seeing him crumpled in the snow. Her hands come up and so does the water and so does Zuko, inside it. Aang is already at the shore and grabs him out of the wave, even though his weight's enough to knock Aang down.

This is the Avatar, Katara thinks, watching Aang hit the ice, thin legs sprawling awkwardly and thin arms full of an unconscious, still-bleeding firebender who is so much bigger than him that he's almost vanishing beneath his body. This is the Avatar, the hope of the world, the hero who could defeat the Fire Nation.

This is Aang, worrying about a _prince_ of the Fire Nation.

Like he thinks he has the room to.

“Let me see, Aang,” Katara says, kneeling next to him and calling water up out of the snow. She wipes the fresh blood off Zuko's face to get a better look, but mostly all there is to see is scar. She remembers the strange sight of the uninjured eye underneath and wonders if he did it to himself, for the fearsome look it gives him; for the implied threat of it. That seems like a Fire Nation kind of thing to do. She wonders where his armor went, too, but that's a much easier question to answer. Even as strong a swimmer as Sokka would've had trouble dragging up anyone dressed like _that_ , she's sure; he must've stripped it off him.

She can't believe they're taking care of a firebender. From the look of him, though, they could take him to the best healer in the South and he wouldn't make it, so at least it won't be for long. Even less time than that, because on her _life_ Katara is not taking him anywhere near the protection and warmth of the village. It'll be better if he goes quick, anyway.

“We can't take him back to the village,” she says, just to make sure Aang isn't going to get any ideas. “If they come looking for him or us and we're _there_ . . .”

“We could take him to the Southern Air Temple!” Aang blurts, leaning forward. “Nobody can get up there!”

“Aang, I don't think . . .” Katara hesitates, then turns away and makes her eyes stay on the fresh but already half-frozen blood welling at Zuko's temple. She wonders what the Air Temples looked like, when the Fire Nation was done with them. She wonders what _Aang_ would look like, if he ever found out—she's certain he doesn't believe her about the rest of the airbenders, not _really_. No one who believed her could have left that ship without causing so much more pain than they'd had the chance to. “I don't think we should move him that much right now. I'll build an igloo for him, okay? Until we figure something better out.”

“Okay,” Aang says, visibly deflating, and Katara leaves him with Zuko and starts pulling water onto the shore and working it into the cracks in the ice. They're not too bad, but she doesn't know how long it's going to take Zuko to die and with midnight sun to contend with they could get a lot bigger dangerously quickly. Sokka's bored almost immediately and drops off the side of the ice floe, and Katara's stomach twists unpleasantly to see him go but she doesn't try to call him back. Sokka always leaves.

So far he's always come back, too, but she's not holding her breath.

.

.

.

Really. She's not.

.

.

.

Even as a waterbender, Katara can't build an igloo as well as her father would've. She does her best but the shape's a little odd and a good three times in the process she has to catch the thing mid-collapse with her bending. Eventually she gets it to stay up, but nothing's fixing that shape. Probably even a waterbending _master_ couldn't fix the shape at this point, she thinks resignedly, flash-freezing a last layer of snow into the cracks.

“That looks great, Katara!” Aang says happily, and Katara looks at him and then looks at Zuko, still unconscious but with his wounds cleaned and bandaged and his body wrapped up in a blanket from Appa's saddle. An _airbender's_ blanket, she thinks, and barely keeps the igloo from collapsing all over again.

“It's the best I can do,” she says. At least it'll warm up quick, judging from how far Zuko's elevated body heat has already melted him into the snow. They'll need to lay down extra blankets, or he might melt in a little _too_ far.

Then again, that wouldn't be the worst thing. They have much bigger problems than taking care of a good-as-dead enemy—they _should_ be going north and finding a waterbending master, and maybe earthbending too while they're at it. As for firebending . . . well, they'll break that ice when they come to it. It isn't as if Aang really _needs_ firebending, anyway; in Katara's experience fighting fire with fire just makes sure _everyone_ gets burned.

Besides, who'd even teach him?

If it were one of Mom's stories, Katara knows, Zuko would wake up fine after all and be _so_ grateful that they'd saved him that _he_ would, or would at least owe them some kind of honor debt that'd make him _have_ to, and then he'd mend his ways and grow up and be a _good_ lord, like in the old days, but it isn't so instead Zuko is going to die without _ever_ waking up, probably, and even if by some miracle he does, he'll still be bad and he'll still try to hurt them anyway. That's how the real world works.

They drag Zuko into the igloo and Katara wraps him up the best she can in what few blankets Appa had, hating herself for defiling an Air Nomad's possessions this way, even if the Air Nomad is more than willing and is in fact offering up everything he can think of and trying to think of more things besides. But it doesn't matter that possessions aren't important to airbenders; what matters is that _this_ is a _fire_ bender. This is a firebender, and Katara is laying monk-woven yellow blankets over him like he is worthy of them. Like he _deserves_ to have survived this fall.

And he won't survive it much longer, she knows, but it's already been longer than her brother ever had.

.

.

.

“Can he eat that?” Aang worries. Katara is sitting by the water, skinning Sokka’s abandoned koala-otter and waiting for him to come back, and for a moment does not understand the question. “He”--

“Who, the _firebender_?” she asks, giving him a bemused look. Why would they waste good meat on an enemy--an enemy who’s about to die _anyway_?

“He’s not going to get better if we don’t feed him,” Aang says, glancing back into the igloo with the same worried little look, twisting the front of his shirt in his fingers like he’s seriously considering taking it off and giving it to Zuko, which just . . . no. _He’s not GOING to get better,_ Katara doesn’t say, although judging by Aang’s expression her face probably says it for her. Aang doesn’t say anything else, though, just goes for Appa’s saddlebags again and searches through them a fourth time, like Zuko isn’t already under his blanket and his spare blanket and every scrap of cloth and cloth-like object Aang could find. 

Katara seriously considers just giving him her coat. She’d rather freeze than have Aang keep wasting his time on a firebender like this. 

She butchers the koala-otter and dices the meat and dumps it into Aang’s cookpot with a pile of snow and wishes Sokka would come back. 

.

.

.

She wishes Sokka would come back. 

.

.

.

Katara’s gone to shore and back and dug up a whole cookpot’s worth of iceroot and snow potatoes and birchberries by the time Sokka comes back dragging an armful of seaweed and another dead koala-otter. He tries to kiss seaweed into Aang’s mouth but Aang puts him off, blushing and glancing over to Katara nervously, and she cooks it up for him as best as she can, although she doesn’t really know any recipes that aren’t meant to have meat in them. 

Sokka kisses blood and meat into her mouth and she melts inside. Then she remembers Aang and the unconscious mother-killer in the igloo and pulls away, gut clutching up painfully and not at all the way it usually does when Sokka is kissing her. 

“Um, here, let me,” she says, taking the koala-otter and skinning it quickly. Sokka makes a confused noise, but doesn’t try to feed her again. 

“. . . we should really make him that loincloth,” Aang says, blushing all over again. 

“I’ll _get_ to it!” Katara blurts, her own face just as red. 

.

.

.

The food cooks and Katara eats and makes sure Aang eats and attempts to feed Sokka, who yelps when he takes his first sip of half-boiling stew but immediately proceeds to decimate the bowl she’s poured him and goes back for seconds and thirds. Zuko doesn’t wake up, and keeps not waking up, which is fine. 

He also doesn’t die, and keeps not dying, which is _not_ fine. 

Katara takes a bowl of the broth into the igloo to placate Aang and tries to get Zuko to drink it. He stirs a little and chokes, but doesn’t die or wake up, and she can’t get him to swallow anything. Aang hovers nervously behind her, feet just barely pressing into the snow, and she tries not to sigh. Or scream. 

It’s just such a _waste_. Aang wants to help a killer. Aang wants to help a _monster_ , let him in close and--what, exactly? What does Aang think he’s going to do, if Zuko wakes up? If Zuko _gets_ up? 

He doesn’t even believe her about the Air Nomads. 

“He won’t eat,” she says finally, sitting back on her heels with the bowl and wondering if he’ll be stubborn enough to starve. He might. The Fire Nation is awful enough to make them sit through that; surely its prince can find the spite to make even his death a burden. 

“We have to feed him,” Aang says. 

“He won’t _eat_ ,” Katara repeats, trying not to be frustrated. Aang’s her age, but not _quite_ her age. Aang thinks they could still go to the Southern Air Temple and find anything but a burned-out husk. 

“Well--we can make him!” Aang insists, and Katara gives him a disbelieving look. 

_“How?”_ she demands. Sokka takes the bowl from her. She lets him, because she’d rather he eat it than the firebender anyway. “He’s not even conscious enough to know where he _is_!” 

“I don’t know, but we have to _try_ ,” Aang says plaintively. Katara can think of a lot of things they have to do, and _none_ of them are “nurse the firebender prince”. 

Sokka takes a swallow of broth and leans past them. Katara freezes, part of her already very aware of what he’s about to do before the rest of her can catch up in time to stop him. She hears Zuko choke, very quietly.

_“Sokka!”_ she screeches, whipping around just in time to see Sokka straightening back up and licking broth off his mouth. 

“Not-brother eat,” he says smugly, then takes another mouthful of broth before leaning down again. Katara covers her face in horror, _refusing_ to watch this. She’s going to make him scrub his mouth out with snow before she ever kisses him again. She’s going to make him scrub his mouth out with _bitterroot_. 

“Okay, that works,” Aang says, sounding relieved. 

“I’m going to be _sick_ ,” Katara groans. “He’s a firebender! He _breathes fire_!” 

“. . . maybe be careful, Sokka?” Aang says with a wince. 

.

.

.

Sokka manages to feed Zuko without getting burned, mercifully, and Katara makes him scrub his mouth out with snow because who _knows_ what a firebender might be carrying. He’s not thrilled about it but he doesn’t protest, and he’s mostly just smug over his success. Aang’s just relieved Zuko’s eaten, because apparently they care about the well-being of Fire Nation kidnappers now. If Aang’s a normal example, she can’t imagine how the airbenders survived as long as they did. 

They settle in outside the igloo, and Sokka immediately wanders off. He’s Sokka, so of course he does, but it still makes something in Katara ache. She feels like she might go crazy. 

She wishes the moon were coming-- _real_ moon, and real night. Right now the sun just feels like an insult. 

“Yell if he wakes up,” she says finally, and wanders off herself. Not too far--she doesn’t like leaving someone as trusting as Aang alone with someone as dangerous as Zuko--but far enough to get a little space for herself and her thoughts. She sits down by the edge of the water and calls a little sphere of it to herself to toss fretfully from hand to hand, trying to stay calm about things like Fire Nation princes and lost airbenders and Sokka kissing strangers. It’s okay. Things are okay. 

Things are not very okay, actually. 

Katara takes a ragged breath, letting the water fall into the snow, and Sokka surfaces without a ripple and peers up at her over the edge of the ice. She thinks about crying, but it’s not the time for it. 

Her eyes still feel like they’re burning. 

“You should’ve let him drown,” she says listlessly. She should’ve sunk that ship and let them _all_ drown. She doesn’t think she actually could’ve, but at least she could’ve tried. 

“Drown is scary,” Sokka says. 

She supposes he’d know. 

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Katara says, and Sokka clambers up out of the water and shakes himself dry. She puts a hand up to keep herself from getting wet, then flicks the water she caught aside. Sokka leans in and nuzzles her. 

“Katara magic,” he says. 

“It’s not magic,” she sniffles, burying her face in his shoulder. “It’s waterbending.” 

“Magic,” Sokka repeats firmly, nuzzling her hair. “Hungry?” 

“No.” She sniffles again, rubbing a hand roughly across her eyes. It doesn’t help the burning. 

“Katara no eat!” Sokka says with a frown. 

“No, I just . . .” Katara takes a breath, stifling another sniffle. “Can we try something?” 

“What try?” Sokka asks, perking curiously as he leans in. Katara kisses him. He makes a confused sound, but after a moment kisses back. It’s clumsy and uncertain, but it’s definitely a kiss. She puts her arms around his neck and holds him close and kisses him some more, and he leans into her and kisses back, which is all she ever could’ve asked for, more than even the seal-skin he doesn’t have. 

She wonders if he’d want her to have it, if he did. Probably not. Sokka likes going away too much. 

As long as he comes back, though . . . 

They stop kissing, eventually. Katara rubs at her eyes again and Sokka gives her a searching look. 

“Not-brother is okay?” he asks. 

“I . . . yes,” Katara says, sniffling again. If Zuko were a spirit boy, he’d be an evil one; something consuming and cruel, something that was all the worst parts of fire. But Sokka is asking, so . . . “Yes, he’s fine.” 

Then she cries a little after all, and Sokka licks away her tears and wraps his arms around her, clumsy and awkward but strong and _perfect_. She clings to him, thinking that she could stay in his arms for good, if she had the chance. It’s all she wants. In the stories, boys like Sokka end up as starlight or sea foam, and she wonders if she could too. She’d be alright being starlight, she thinks, as long as she was starlight with Sokka. 

.

.

.

Eventually, Katara forces herself to let go of Sokka and get up. Aang’s alone; it’s not safe. Sokka disappears into the water, and she heads back to camp with regret. She’d much rather be with him than anywhere else. 

When she gets back to the tent Aang is nibbling on some leftover seaweed and watching the mouth of the igloo worriedly. Katara checks on Zuko with an icicle in her fist and finds that Aang’s changed his bandages while she was gone. Part of her cringes at the thought of him doing that without her there in case Zuko woke up, and she promises herself not to leave him alone for that long again. 

Zuko is no more conscious than before, and his skin is hot when she touches it. She’s not sure if that’s a fever setting in or a firebender recovering, though. 

A day or so goes by with no improvement or any real change at all, which is probably a bad sign, she thinks. She thinks about getting Gran-Gran for help, but it’s not worth risking the village for someone who’d been this close to _destroying_ the village. She feels calmer now--colder, as if the dark has finally come and wrapped her up sweetly in its protection--and considers just killing him. Aang doesn’t have to know, if she does it right. 

This isn’t _safe_. 

Aang doesn’t understand. He needs to understand. 

And Zuko needs to just . . . be gone. 

.

.

.

“Maybe you were right about the Southern Air Temple,” Katara says, and Aang brightens in a way that is painful to watch. 

“Really?” he asks, grinning hopefully at her. 

“Yeah,” Katara says. “Let’s go.” 

.

.

.

It’s--it’s bad of her. But leaving the South Pole is safer and after this they can go North and get trained like they wanted to and--and it won’t matter, if Zuko dies on the way. That’ll just be . . . that’ll just be fate. Or the ice catching up to him. Or what _has_ to happen. 

Katara knows what has to happen. 

They pack up their little camp onto Appa’s back and tie Zuko safely into the back of his saddle, bundled up with almost all the blankets. They’ll have to hunt on the way, Katara thinks; their very small supply of food won’t last long. But she can sew more clothes and blankets if necessary and they can sleep in Appa’s saddle and they can work for money, if they need it. 

It’s too bad Zuko’s armor is gone, they probably could’ve sold that somewhere. His clothes aren’t even that good, though, now that she’s paying attention to them. Shouldn’t Fire princes wear prettier things than that? 

It would really come in handy right now if they did, is her point here.

Aang gets on Appa, and Katara starts to follow him—then stops, and looks back, and stares at the water. Sokka isn't here. Sokka should be here—Sokka should _come_. But Sokka is a seal-boy, not a boy-boy, and it wouldn't be safe, and it wouldn't be right, and . . . and . . .

Sokka leans out of Appa’s saddle to peer down at her, expression curious. 

“Katara come?” he asks. Katara just . . . tries not to cry. 

“Yes,” she says. “Katara come.” 

She climbs up into the saddle beside him and takes his hands and squeezes them, not sure what to do or say. Sokka is a seal-boy. Does he even understand what they’re doing here? 

“You don’t have to come,” she tries. “It’s dangerous. And we might be gone a long time.” 

“I come,” Sokka says firmly, squeezing her hands in return and giving her that wild grin just like the first time, like something recognized from long ago. “Sokka will stay with Katara.” 

“Okay,” Katara sniffs, and wraps her arms around him. She doesn’t know what to expect after this, but if Sokka’s coming . . . it’ll be better, she already knows, with Sokka there. 

“We _definitely_ need to get him a loincloth now, though,” Aang says. Which--yeah, okay. That’s fair. 

.

.

.

Katara spends the trip to the Southern Air Temple keeping half an eye on Zuko, uncorked waterskin at her side, and the rest of her time sewing a loincloth and a pair of pants for Sokka out of one of the smaller blankets. It takes most of the trip and he doesn’t actually like either, but she at least manages to convince him to wear them. 

It’s strange, seeing him with his hair pulled back in loops and a wolftail and dressed anything like a normal boy. It almost makes him look . . . well. 

Like a normal boy. 

Maybe she’ll make him a tunic on the way North, she thinks, watching Sokka flop dramatically onto the saddle with all the oppressed groaning of a toddler in their first pair of pants. It probably _is_ his first pair of pants, at least since he fell off the ice, so that makes sense. He wears them, though, so at least they’ll be able to take him out in public. 

Zuko’s skin is still hot, and Katara still can’t tell if that’s good or bad--for him _or_ them. 

They’re almost at the temple, though, so Aang will understand soon enough. 

She wishes he didn’t have to, but . . . 

.

.

.

They make it to the temple. Aang’s so excited that Katara doesn’t have the heart to remind him why he shouldn’t be, and she busies herself with making sure the damn firebender hasn’t died while Aang shows Sokka how to play some old game. Zuko’s skin is _very_ hot. She’s increasingly sure that’s a bad sign. 

For him, she means. Obviously. 

She grudgingly wipes a cool rag over his flushed face, and his brow just barely furrows, head falling to one side. 

“Mother,” he murmurs, and everything inside Katara turns to ice. How dare he. How _dare_ \-- 

People like this don’t deserve mothers. 

The rag freezes in her trembling hand, and it takes everything in her not to reshape the ice into a sharp edge. Aang wouldn’t understand. Not yet. Aang--

The sky lights up brilliant and white-hot as the wind whips up around them, and Katara jerks away from Zuko and stares up at it. What--? 

.

.

.

Katara never meant for Aang to find anything like the body of someone he’d known. She hadn’t thought there’d still _be_ bodies here--surely the Fire Nation had taken the airbenders all away to waste away in cells, same as the Southern waterbenders. She hadn’t realized they’d killed them _here_ , or that they’d have left the bodies to rot where they fell. 

She should’ve realized. 

She’s so stupid, not to have realized. 

Aang cries for a long, long time, and all Katara can do is hold him. 

.

.

.

They don’t stay at the temple, for obvious reasons. Katara gets them all back into Appa’s saddle and back into the air, not caring where they end up. A small, strange-looking animal scrabbles into the saddle with them and she doesn’t bother chasing it away; fresh meat is fresh meat. Right now, though, Aang is more important. He’s lost even more than she has to the Fire Nation--he’s lost _everything_ to the Fire Nation--and even though she knows there was no keeping the secret, she hates the part of herself that let him find it out. 

There was no helping it, though. 

“I’m sorry, Aang,” she says. 

“You tried to tell me,” he says, sniffling wetly. Sokka’s giving him a wide berth, still wary after the display of the Avatar State. That puts him practically on top of Zuko, which Katara could almost laugh about. Sokka thinks it’s safer next to _him_? Shouldn’t a seal-boy have better instincts than that? 

She thinks of the old man on the Fire Nation ship, the only unarmored face she saw there besides Zuko himself, and has the strange wish that he were _here_ so she could pawn Zuko off on him. It’s _his_ prince, after all, and she has an Avatar to worry about. An Avatar who’s still worried about _Zuko_ , of all things. Would he react like this to any wounded enemy? Could he have the Fire Lord himself at his mercy and still feel pity? 

It’s no wonder all the airbenders are dead. 

They shouldn’t be. The world should be better than that. But it’s not, of course, because the Fire Nation is in it, and the Avatar doesn’t want to kill anyone. 

She tells herself that won’t last--can’t last--but for right now, it still sees Zuko unconscious and feverish in the back of Appa’s saddle; still sees them with a sick and wounded firebender to take care of and no idea what’s going to happen with him. If this were a story . . . 

But it’s not a story. 

Sokka comes up beside them, and Katara feels his side press into hers. She wants to hold onto him and never let go, and hide Aang away someplace safe, and kick Zuko right off Appa’s back. But Sokka won’t stay still forever, and Aang can’t be hidden, and even if she _did_ kick Zuko off Aang would just go catch him. 

There’s so much ahead of them, and so much sadness and danger around them, and she has no idea what to do about any of it. 

Sokka kisses the corner of her mouth, sending warmth all through the cold of her, and Katara wishes this were a different kind of story. But it’s her story, at least, so she can at least decide what _some_ of it’s going to be. 

She kisses Sokka back and squeezes the arm she has around Aang and promises herself she’ll never let anyone hurt either of them without getting through her first. It’s the best she can do, so it’s what she’s going to do. And maybe someday this _will_ be a story, just like the ones Mom used to tell her, and maybe it’ll even be a happy one. 

For right now, though, it’s just her and her boys, and that’s so much better than being alone.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


End file.
